We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Paul Angone a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Paul, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I’m about to see a really meaningful project release into the world–my fifth published book, “Listen To Your Day: The Life-Changing Practice of Paying Attention.”

Like every book I’ve written, the “why” behind writting this book was birthed out of my own struggle and a desire to overcome.

I’d never felt more distracted in my life. With my phone constantly in front of my face, I felt like I was missing out on so much in front of me. My mental health, relationships, and overall life satisfaction were suffering. We’re living in such a noisy world.

I wanted clarity and contentment in my life, yet I began to realize I wasn’t seeing or hearing so much important stuff happening right in front of me every day. I knew I needed a big change. I was losing the battle for my own attention. I was no longer seeing or hearing what was actually important in my life.

So I started researching and writing “Listen To Your Day” a book that I believe is incredibly needed for all of us today.

Your day has so much to tell you, but most of us miss it. We’re daily given the answers to our biggest life questions, every day, but we’ve lost the ability to see and hear them.

In this age of distraction, we’re losing the skill and art of paying attention. How do we reclaim our own attention to focus on things of worth that matter?

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m one of the nation’s most trusted and sought-after voices to young professionals, people going through change and transitions, and those looking to live more intentional lives. I’m the bestselling author of “101 Secrets for Your Twenties”, “101 Questions You Need to Ask in Your Twenties”,
“25 Lies Twentysomethings Need to Stop Believing”, and my newest book “Listen To Your Day: The Life-Changing Practice of Paying Attention.”

With each book my goal is to breathe insight, hope, and inspiration to each person who reads. Through engaging stories, vulnerability, and research, I aim to create frameworks for people to find their answers to their biggest questions that they maybe didn’t realize they were asking.

I’m also a dynamic keynote speaker and have spoken at hundreds of universities, corporations, and conferences nationwide. With all my books, research I’ve done, and a masters degree in organizational leadership, I specialize in helping all generations work better together. I help companies attract, retain, develop, and harness the best strengths of the Millennial and Gen Z generations. Then as well, help leaders learn a new way to pay attention, narrowing their focus on what’s important to the core of their company.

I’m the creator of AllGroanUp.com, which has been read by millions in 190 different countries, and the All Groan Up podcast.

I’m a media spokesperson on the unique challenges facing Gen Z and Millennial generations
including topics like social media addiction—which he has extensively researched and defined as
“Obsessive Comparison Disorder” and “Obsessive Connection Disorder”. Paul has done hundreds
of radio, TV, and podcast interviews. He frequently contributes and has been featured, in
publications such as Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, Business Insider, Huffington Post,
EntreLeadership, Relevant Magazine, etc.

I live in Littleton, Colorado, with my wife, Naomi, and our four children.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

It took me ten years of rejection, rewrites, dead-ends, and do-overs before I saw my first book published “101 Secrets For Your Twenties.” I was rejected by every publisher around. After all my dreams of best-selling books, speaking tours, and talk show appearances faded away, their was one key question that I kept asking myself that kept me going as a creative with a message I felt was important.

“Who will I not be able to help if I give up now?”

A year from now, five years from now, someone is going to need this book I’m working on. If I give up now, I won’t be there for them. I have to persevere because I know this is an important message that is worth fighting for. Now, five books later, I’ve received many of those messages of people finding hope to keep going through reading one of my books.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

It takes about 10 years to create an overnight success. That’s a principle I lived by almost to the day. It took me about ten years of being rejected by publishers, rewrites, and pivoting to find different strategies to move forward to finally getting a book deal.

After publishers turned me down because I didn’t have a sizable platform, I created a website AllGroanUp.com to connect directly with my audience. I started writing blogs, learning social media strategies, creating shareable graphics, etc. After years of working on the website and slowly building an audience, I was about to quit. It was a slow grind. I had two young kids and a full-time job in marketing, so time was extremely limited. Was it time to finally give up the dream?

I decided to write a blog post called “21 Secrets For Your 20s”, which were the core principles from various articles I’d already written and linked to in the article. I posted the article without much thought and a day later my website started crashing because I was getting too much traffic. Mainly readers started sharing the article like wildfire on Pinterest of all places, and now that article has over millions of views. I was able to turn that momentum into my first book deal of “101 Secrets For Your Twenties”

Contact Info:

• Website: allgroanup.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulangone/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AllGroanUp/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulangone/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/PaulAngone
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTRxssm9FPeqeX77HIsY97A